THE DRAMATIC luminous cobalt blue walls in the drawingroom of 12 Raglan Road were created using Venetian stucco which was made popular during the Italian Renaissance.

The owner hired fourth generation craftsman Jean Louis Gaggioli of Bati Peinture in St Jean Cap Ferrat, France (00334 93 76 12 07) to do the work, which took around two weeks just for this one room. Because of the time and amount of labour involved it doesn’t come cheap.

While Venetian stucco can have a rough finish, it is usually shiny and many-layered such as that at 12 Raglan Road.

Getting the walls to a perfect dark blue lustre involved stripping them and then binding them with fibre mesh to stop any cracking. The walls were then skimmed with layers of plaster followed by three layers of coloured plaster mixed with marble dust.

Finally, they were waxed to give them a high sheen and the illusion of depth and texture.